


Sybil, What Do You Think of the Stars?

by Alpenglow92



Category: Original Work, The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Anesthetics, Awkward Romance, Best Friends, Boredom, Coma, Coming of Age, Dreams vs. Reality, Drugs, EXCITING, Eventual Romance, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Exploration, F/M, Friendship/Love, Growing Up, Hospitalized, Isolation, Light Angst, Loneliness, Meaning of Life, Moving On, Original Fiction, Platonic Soulmates, Sad, Satisfaction, Self-Acceptance, Soul-Searching, Teenage Rebellion, The Catcher in the Rye - Freeform, Trust Issues, fulfillment, literary fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 09:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13737591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alpenglow92/pseuds/Alpenglow92
Summary: A lonely 16-year old girl falls off her roof spying on the neighbours, nearly dies, and goes on a hallucinogenic trip with the neighbour's step-grandson.





	Sybil, What Do You Think of the Stars?

SYBIL, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE STARS?

Ruisi Liu

 

To be quite honest, this story probably isn’t going anywhere. Going anywhere good, I mean. Because I’m sorry to say, none of this really happened, as much as I wish it did. It wasn’t real. It was some hallucinogenic trip or some prolonged dream during my one-hour long anesthesia in the hospital when I nearly died three years ago, at sixteen years old, being the idiot I was. 

 

I think it was an early September sunday when it happened, just a week before school started. It was one of those really gray days but they were a mind-soothing gray. It was alright during the day, not too bad. I didn’t do shit all day except lie around on my bed, probably watching Netflix, but more likely masturbating out of sheer boredom. I had just moved into that semi-detached house (or whatever you call it when a house was glued to another) in a new suburban area. My neighbor was an old man named Charles, and none of that summer-lovin-with-the-next-door-neighbor was gonna happen. So, excuse me that my day-to-day hobbies were lame, but making friends in a new city, especially during summer, was like trying to put toothpaste that a three-year-old had squeezed all over the bathroom counter, a white clumpy goo of red and blue stripes back into the original tube. It was hell, let alone barely possible. Where the fuck were you supposed to make friends, as a teenage girl? Do you simply walk to the mall and casually sit outside a Brandy Melville store and just tag around, like a stray dog awaiting to be adopted and loved? I could’ve also lied about my age and make a Tinder account, caption the bio with brutal cliched honesty ‘New to the city, just trying to make friends!’ but I didn’t do that. I would’ve done it if it didn’t have to include my face. I was sort of ugly, and I looked clearly underage with my shit braces. I could rant hours on about how terribly lonely I was. God, it sucked. It sucked ass. I was almost tempted to open my mom’s kitchen drawer, take out a pot and a pan, walk down to the end of my street and just start banging it. I don’t know why the idea was tempting. Attention, maybe? It was stupid. I’m glad I didn’t do it. Realistically, I could’ve probably volunteered somewhere and meet people. But like I said, I was an idiot. Sorry wait, my bad. Not idiot. Half escapist, half spontaneous-mess. So to cure my loneliness, I did do something else. And I don’t know if this experience was the worst or the best that I’ve ever had. Because I still think about it to this day, on a gray sunday of September with some chipped coffee mug in my hand.

 

The sky was never pitch black even at night. Those light-polluting garbage streetlights would just naturally cast spotlights to all the directionless moths that fluttered, with false belief that the man-made light was the moon. I periodically glanced to the window as I lied on my twin bed. The lights were off in my room and I was listening to music underneath the popcorned ceiling. If you really want to know, it was “Sky Full of Stars” by Coldplay that was playing. I didn’t even like Coldplay that much, but it was on shuffle and I couldn’t skip the song. It wasn’t like I was dying to hear any other song, anyways. It’s hard to feel that strong passion for music when you’re not feeling particularly alive. My room was starting to smell strongly like drying paint, so I had to open my window just a crack with the bug screen, enough to not suffocate. 

 

It was then when I heard the noise of people laughing and car doors slamming outside my window. I got out of my sheets to look and I saw my neighbor’s families coming in to greet them. They exchanged hugs and a few of the older ones were speaking french. It was pretty fascinating to watch them interact without them knowing that you’re really there. It was nothing like Netflix, unsurprisingly. It was all real, unfiltered, raw. Interrupted. I was listening for a good ten minutes as they talked about their lives on the porch. From what I could hear, it was all small talk, the same type that you’d hear at Thanksgiving dinner tables. The “How’s it going, how’s Jean and the kids?” And that stuff. I learned that one family’s child had lost their first tooth and that another one, a boy who looked no older than my age, had gotten in a fight, according to the mom who wore a long sleeve white turtleneck. He denied it in a wave of a hand, and all the family proceeded to walk into my old neighbor’s home. 

 

My people-watching session was cut short, but I didn’t feel like going back into my bed. This other ingenious plan popped to my mind. My roof was connected to theirs, and they had this old chimney pipe thing that stuck out from the roof, and connected to the living room. I knew because I had the same thing. If I got on top of their roof (or rather, our conjoined roof) I could still hear what they were saying. So out of impulse and a stalkerish curiosity, I removed the mosquito net from my window, stepped carefully one foot over the window sill and balance carefully on the ledge. Like spiderman, I did the best I could to sorta hop over to their roof. I nearly fucking died. Thank god I was wearing socks. They provided somewhat of a grip against the rough texture of the roof. And so I climbed up to the chimney hole, put my ear to it and just listened. Lots of plates and forks clinging around at first. A barking dog muffled their voices. A baby cried aloud, followed by the kisses and cooing of the mother. A minute later, they seemed to have settled a bit.

 

“Wow, Charles. You spoil us. I really can’t.” The woman sounded like the mom in the white turtleneck.

“Anything for my daughter in law, eh? Here, here.”

“No, I cannot accept it. This is too much—“

“For the baby, Garcia. For the baby.” 

There seemed to be a gift being unwrapped by the shuffling of wrapping paper. The mother, who I assume is Garcia, gasped. 

“Oh, it’s absolutely lovely. Thanks, oh!” 

I assume they hug, here. I think Garcia handed the toy, likely a rattle, to the baby.

“Just one less kid to worry about in the family,” the voice of a man said while patting somebody in the back. “Why can’t you be a little less troublesome, like your baby brother?”

A family laughter emitted from the table. I couldn’t see, but it was one of those moments that all the old people laugh except for the poor person being (lightheartedly) poked fun at by their parents.

The dad spoke again. “Come on, Orion. Tell them about your grades at school last year. Let us have a better laugh, how ‘bout it.”

“I’d rather not say,” said the boy.

“Awe, come on! Pourquoi pas?”

“Really, Tante Abelle. It’s not worth mentioning.” I could feel his frustration rise, despite his collected language.

“He got a fifty-two in math,” said the father, with somewhat of unnatural pride. “I tell him everyday, practice, practice, practice! But he’s too stupid sometimes. I tell him if he doesn’t catch up, how’s he gonna support me when I’m old and balding like you, dad?”

“Aie,” Charles said. “I’m not balding.”

“No, dad. You don’t look a day over twenty-four,” said the dad who triggered another laughing session from the table, mostly from the women.

“Eh?” Charles didn’t seem to hear him, but I could feel him smile anyways.

“Mom,  _ Francois _ , can I be excused from the table?” Orion suddenly said, breaking the laughters. It only then occurred to me that the man wasn’t his biological dad.

“Awe, why would you leave so early?” Tante Abelle squealed.

“Bathroom,” he answered casually. 

“Yes dear,” Garcia said sweetly. “Go ahe—“

“No,” Francois, the stepdad, interrupted. It sounded like he raised his hand to stop her speaking to her own son. “This is a father-son moment.” I imagined he looked towards Orion, and then said “Yes, you MAY be excused. Not can. May. This is why you got a forty-five in english. Now go.”

The dinner table conversation resumed to its bland state. Orion’s foot steps trailed to the front door. The door creaked open, and he was then sitting right under me. I was sort of freaking out. I didn’t expect him to come outside. If I had slipped or made a single noise, he would have looked up and saw me, with the streetlight illuminating me like a spotlight. But he didn’t hear me. He sat down on the dirty steps of the front porch, even though there was a foldable lawn chair in plain sight. He reached into his trousers and pulled out the packaging of a deck of cards. Inside, though, there weren’t any playing cards, but cigarettes. He took one out, placed it effortlessly to his lips and reached his other hand in his pockets for a light, as if he’d done this routine his whole life. God, he looked like some angsty mess that you’d see in a teenage book. It was an incredible sight. He didn’t find a lighter in his pocket. He cussed mildly, the calmest cussing that could ever be said, and delicately folded the deck of cigarettes back into his pocket. I felt really bad for him. I was almost tempted to Spiderman my way back into my house and take out a lighter for him, even though I don’t smoke. Come to think of it, I probably didn’t have one of those sleek little lighters. I had a bulky gun-shaped lighters with that clicky trigger thing for birthday candles. Anyways, I watched on, thinking that he’d walk back into the house by then, but he didn’t. He didn’t pull out a phone, or anything. He kinda just sat there, thoughtfully looking off into the street. Then, out of nowhere, he started talking to himself.

“I understand,” he said, looking up to the lost moths that gathered by the streetlight. “It’s okay if you leave. Really. I don’t want you to miss out on life because of me.”

An angsty smoker, and a madman that talks to moths. I don’t think I was ever so deeply intrigued in my life. This was probably a private moment between him and the universe. Suddenly I didn’t feel so compelled to watch anymore. I felt out of place. So I tried to descend, as discreetly as I can without rattling the pipelines.

“I still do, yes. But just try to forget about me. I think that’s pretty easy to do.” He laughed, but not out of happiness. “Oh, you’re sleeping already? Okay. I love y---” he coughed, and corrected himself with a forced optimistic tone. “Goodnight!”

 

I was wrong. He wasn’t a madman. He was talking to somebody on his phone, through the microphones of his black earbuds that I must’ve missed. I was really trying to get down now, but at that very instant, he looked up. I tried to camouflage myself the best I can by laying low, but he was seeing me.

Shit. 

“Who’s there?” he shouted. 

I scrambled to the other side of the roof to avoid being seen, but I miscalculated my step and I stepped into the air, the heartattack of nothingness, into the cliff, the abyss. And I was thrown like a wingless bird into the freshly trimmed front lawn.

 

Now the rest of this story may vary depending on who you ask. If you ask my parents and my doctors, they’d say that I was passed out, cold. And that I fractured something and got a concussion, and I was rushed to the E.R with a stretcher to have surgery, where they gave me the anesthetics, the apparent fuel of my trip. 

 

But if you ask me, I can tell you vividly without batting an eye that what I’ve experienced afterwards was unquestionably true, and real. After all, reality isn’t up to them to define. Everyone only pretends to know reality, but only few have ever really been acquainted with it. For the realest of all things, like love, do not seem real at all.

 


End file.
